Aishath Rasha, Roobasri Rajasegaran and Raliya Saeed expressed their own beliefs about teaching and learning today.
Aishath thinks the constructivist approach is most applicable for her. In her opinion, teaching is imparting skills to succeed in this world. In the classrooms, it has to be student-centred learning, and there should be many activities to encourage a lot of interaction between the students. After some time, one will see a lot of positive changes as a result of this interaction. Teachers should be facilitating this learning process, suitable to the age as well as be a good guide in teaching emotional values.
Roobasri believes in students’ individual beliefs. The students need to be provided with hands on learning experience. Teachers should be prepared and organized in order to facilitate their students in the learning process. The art of learning is based on the relationship quality between teachers and students. To her, students-centred learning means students can learn anywhere and at any time.
According to Raliya, teaching is a passion. A teacher plays a significant role in shaping the future of the student, and each child is unique and special in his or her own way. Therefore, a teacher needs to identify the different learning styles so they can be adapted to his or her teaching.
When the presenters were asked what they understood about the philosophies of education, and what philosophies they favoured, Rasha chose student-centred philosophies. The examples she gave were constructivism that focuses on education to shape students’ world view (e.g. Piaget, Bruner, Vygotsky), and also ‘Humanism’ that focuses on the nature and goodness in humans, and understanding through senses.
Roobasri chose existentialism that focuses on freedom, development of individuals as we make meaning of our lives, and pragmatism that focuses on hands-on problem solving, experiments and projects which often needed students to work in groups.
Raliya mentioned cognitivism and constructivism where students learn best when they actively construct knowledge through experience.
By Norzaireen Shamsul Kamar